Why Liberia? Why Not Liberia?

While you were on summer vacation the world did not take a vacation!
There has been a great deal of news from around the world, much
of it reporting conflict and violence from Afghanistan to Iraq,
from the Middle East to Liberia.

Many young people (and even adults!) in North America and Europe
know very little about Liberia. In fact before this summer when
the news media began carrying numerous stories on the on-going bloody
civil war in Liberia, many of you may not have even heard of this
relatively small country in West Africa.

Liberia’s National Flag. Why does it have this design?
You will discover the answer by reading the following story.

Indeed, much of what we in North America read about Africa or see
on the TV news relates to violence and suffering that has taken
place in less than a dozen of the 53 countries in Africa. We are
often not given the opportunity to read, see, or hear about the
numerous countries in Africa which are not suffering from civil
wars and violence. We would not be happy with the media in Europe
or Africa if almost all of their coverage of news in the U.S. and
Canada would focus on illicit drug use and crime. These are, of
course, real problems, but there are many more important positive
topics that should also be covered by the news media. The same is
true for our coverage of the news in Africa. Our media should not
ignore real problems like the civil war in Liberia, but these troubling
stories should not be the only news that we receive from Africa.

When our media concentrate on stories of war and violence, we should
try to find out as much as we can about the situation in the places
reported on in order to better understand the reasons for these
conflicts and how best they might be settled. More adequate coverage
of these stories would include an examination of the U.S.’s
role in such conflicts.

Last year we did a current events feature on the role of illicit
diamond trade in funding the civil war in Sierra Leone, Liberia’s
neighbor. In featuring the war in Liberia we will attempt to address
two questions:

Why Liberia—how can we best understand the conflict in
this country?

Why not Liberia—why has the U.S. been so reluctant to
send peace keeping troops to Liberia to halt the terrible violence
at the same time that the U.S. has more than 120,000 troops in Iraq?

Conflict in Liberia

As is the case for any major conflict anywhere in the world, the
reasons for the Liberian conflict are complex, yet taking a look
at how the history of the region is connected with what is happening
today will help us to better understand it. Without the history
of how power and oppression emerged in this region, one might be
quick to draw on stereotypes of Africa to explain the war. For example,
someone might say simply that African governments are corrupt or
that war is a part of tribal cultures in Africa. But let’s
take a closer look at whose hands were actually in the formation
of Liberia and the escalating violence there.

The Formation of Liberia as a Country

Liberia was originally created as a country by freed Black slaves
sent there from America in the early 1800’s. These former
slaves became a ruling elite constituting about 5% of the population.
The descendants of American slaves became known as Amero-Liberians.
The rest of the Liberian population is indigenous to the region,
and they ended up being oppressed by the new ruling elite. Resentment
grew over the years towards this ruling elite. For more detail on
the history of the formation of Liberia as a country, see Module
15: Activity 6: The Return to Sierra Leone and Liberia.

In 1980, a coup d’etat led by Samuel Doe, an indigenous
Liberian, ousted the former regime of Amero-Liberians which had
ruled Liberia for more than 150 years and installed his own. But
he too marginalized the majority of the population politically by
installing primarily people from his own ethnic group into the government.

The ability of Doe’s regime to stay in power is due at least
in part to support from the United States of America. This was a
part of the US Cold War policy. The US gave aid to Liberia out of
fear that they would otherwise side with Libya or the USSR. Doe
actually personally received 66% of the aid, rather than the US
government giving it to the country as a whole. With these resources,
he remained in power largely by terrorizing his own people. This
enhanced ethnic divisions in Liberia since much of the violence
carried out was targeted at certain ethnic groups. In 1988, just
before Doe was ousted from power in a coup d’etat,
the US cut off aid to Liberia.

The Civil War

In 1989, a group called the National Patriotic Front of Liberia
(NPFL) crossed over the Liberian border from Côte d’Ivoire
to overthrow Samuel Doe’s government. The NPFL was made up
largely of the ethnic groups who had been marginalized by Doe’s
regime as well as some mercenaries. This launched the beginning
of a 7-year civil war (1989-1996) in Liberia. Much of this war was
fought over control of areas that have precious resources, such
as diamonds, gold, timber, rubber and iron ore. The leader of the
NPFL was Charles Taylor. By 1992, he controlled most of Liberia,
and in 1997 he won a hotly contested election for president of Liberia.

Charles Taylor as President

Since coming to power, Taylor’s opponents have begun the
next wave of fighting in Liberia. The most prominent among these
rebel groups are the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy
(LURD) and the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL). Taylor’s
regime has been accused of serious human rights violations, controlling
the media in Liberia, and supporting the civil war in Sierra Leone.
In June 2003, Taylor was indicted for war crimes in the 10-year
civil war in Sierra Leone. This launched a new surge of violence
in Liberia again.

Regional Connections

The conflict in Liberia has regional connections. Before it came
to power in the early 1990s, Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic
Front of Liberia (NPFL) used military bases in neighboring Cote
d’Ivoire to attach Samuel Doe’s government. Once in
power, President Taylor openly assisted the Revolutionary United
Front of Sierra Leone and its leader Foday Sankoh. Not surprisingly,
the government of Sierra Leone was very up-set with Taylor and in
recent years allowed the LURD and MODEL rebel movements to have
bases in Sierra Leone from which they attacked the Taylor regime.

As was the case in neighboring Sierra Leone, none of the parties
in long civil war in Liberia were capable of gaining and holding
onto power long enough to stop the terrible violence. Outside assistance
has been needed to reduce the high levels of destruction and violence.
In both Sierra Leone and Liberia this outside assistance came first
from intervention from neighboring countries. Beginning in 1990
the 16 member Economic Community of West African States
(ECOWAS) sent a peace keeping force in to Liberia in an attempt
to enforce a cease-fire between the warring parties. Unfortunately,
while the ECOWAS force helped to reduce tensions this force was
not able to bring an end to the fighting. The ECOWAS forces withdrew
from Liberia after the election of 1997. In August 2003 ECOWAS soldiers
once again entered Monrovia to enforce a ceasefire between the Taylor
regime and LURD forces and to oversea the resignation and departure
from Liberia of Charles Taylor on August 11, 2003. It was only after
the direct intervention of Nigerian President Obasanjo who promised
Charles Taylor safe exile in Nigeria, that Taylor agreed to leave
Liberia. Charles Taylor and his family are currently living in Nigeria.

It is not only through providing peace keepers that Liberia’s
West African neighbors have assisted in bringing an end to this
conflict. Throughout the summer officials from ECOWAS countries
have hosted a meeting of Liberians in Accra, the capital city of
Ghana. These on-going meetings brought together representatives
of the Charles Taylor’s regime, of LURD and MODEL (the two
main rebel groups), and very importantly, other Liberian leaders
representing the people of Liberia. The primary goals of these negotiations
were to achieve and agreement on a lasting cease-fire between the
three warring parties, establish conditions in which food and medicines
could be imported and distributed to the many suffering civilians,
and establish an agreed upon political frame-work for governing
Liberia in the immediate future.

It is testimony to the skills and hard work of the ECOWAS diplomats
and the Liberian leaders that an agreement between all parties has
been reached on how Liberia is to be governed until democratic elections
can be held in 2005. These negotiations were not easy and the agreement
will not hold unless the international community is willing to provide
Liberia with the material, political, and military support necessary
to hold the peace.

ECONOMIC COMMUNITY OF WEST AFRICAN STATES (ECOWAS)

Seeing the Global Forces at Work in African
Conflicts
Africa has for a long time been a “playing field” of
European and American economic and political interests. We see in
the example of Liberia how the US established Liberia as a place
to send repatriated slaves. This exploitation of African peoples
as slaves and then disruption of the local scene in Liberia as they
were sent back as a ruling elite was the source of an imbalanced
power dynamic that divided people in Liberia according to ethnicity.
The US support of another corrupt regime—Samuel Doe’s—exasperated
further ethnic divisions. Furthermore, the wars in Liberia and Sierra
Leone were largely funding by warring factions selling precious
natural resources for weapons on the world market.

The current crisis in Liberia came to the attention of the world
community at the same time as the conflict in Iraq. The conditions
that persuaded President Bush and the U.S. lead coalition of nations
to invade and temporary occupy Iraq are not dissimilar to the conditions
that exist in Liberia. With Liberia, of course, there was no question
of having weapons of mass destruction, however, Liberia was experiencing
massive violence, wide spread death, the displacement of more than
one half of its population, and the near total destruction of the
political, economic, and social infrastructure of the country.

Based on the experience of severe civil strife in neighboring Sierra
Leone and Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia’s neighboring states
(ECOWAS) the African Union (see
current events espose on the Birth of the African Union) and
the United Nation’s Security Council strongly urged international
intervention in Liberia. While ECOWAS was willing to send a new
peace keeping force into Liberia, the experience in Sierra Leone
and Cote d’Ivoire demonstrated that ECOWAS did not have the
resources on its own to establish and maintain peace and order.
Peace was established in Sierra Leone when ECOWAS peace keepers
where assisted by better resourced troops from the Britain, the
former colonial power in Sierra Leone. Similarly, the civil war
in neighboring Cote d’Ivoire was brought under control when
a French peace-keeping force was deployed to assist West African
peace-keepers.

As a result of these experiences, the United Nations, and the African
Union strongly encouraged the United States to play a similar role
in Liberia by providing a peace-keeping force to work along side
of ECOWAS peace-keepers in Liberia. Why the U.S. and not France
or Britain? Britain was the formal colonial power in Sierra Leone
and France was the former colonial power in Cote d’Ivoire,
but Liberia, as you may remember, was one of two African countries
that was never a colony of and external power. However, Liberia
had always had a special relationship with the U.S. from it founding
in the early 19th century up until current time. The nature of this
special relationship is detailed in Module
15: Activity 6: The Return to Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Interestingly, it is not only external interest groups like the
African Union, ECOWAS and the UN that are encouraging the U.S. to
become actively engaged in Liberia. The government and both rebel
groups have strongly encouraged U.S involvement. Moreover, reports
from international observers in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital,
indicate that among the civilian population there is near universal
support for U.S. engagement. In addition, almost all African advocacy
groups in the United States have called upon the Bush Administration
to send an U.S. peace-keeping force to Liberia.

Click
here to read a short editorial by Salih Booker, executive director
of African Action, advocating U.S. engagement in Liberia. [Quinn,
please link to file <booker_editorial>]

In spite of the wide-spread support for U.S. engagement in Liberia
and the great need for peace and stability in Liberia the U.S. government
has not, to date, decided to deploy U.S. peace-keepers in Liberia.
For just under two weeks after Charles Taylor resigned and went
into exile in Nigeria there was a small (less than 200 soldiers)
contingent of U.S. marines who went ashore from naval ships off
the coast of Liberia to help ECOWAS troops secure the airport and
sea port in Monrovia.

Why has the U.S. decided not to respond in Liberia? We cannot answer
this question, since the administration has not provided a clear
answer or policy statement on this crisis. However, we encourage
you to investigate this question. You can do this by reading reports
in major U.S. newspapers. All major newspapers have a searchable
archive. You simply enter “Liberia” and follow the stories
that cover the US government response to the crisis in Liberia.

In addition, you should investigate the U.S.
Department of State website. This site carries all of the official
statements on Liberia made by Secretary of State Colin Powell and
other senior State Department officials: